ART IN REVIEW; Pepe Mar -- Hunga Bunga

By KEN JOHNSON

Published: August 11, 2006

Freight & Volume
542 West 24th Street, Chelsea
Through Aug. 18

Pepe Mar constructs delightful, funny and scary child-size monsters in three dimensions out of glue and scraps of paper cut from all kinds of found printed material. The one- and two-footed figures have snarling faces with big, staring eyes lifted from fashion photographs and other sources, and carnivorous animal mouths or swollen human lips and dirty teeth derived from photographic images.

Bristling with spiky manes, the heads are on thin, patchwork Cubist bodies with skinny legs and splayed feet; the figures could be killing machines from an animated sci-fi movie or overwrought rock 'n' roll stars. One predominantly blue figure has a cut-out guitar, evoking both Picasso's seminal collage construction ''Guitar'' of 1912-13 and the ridiculously aggressive spirit of heavy-metal music. The collaged fashion monsters of Wangechi Mutu also come to mind, but those of Mr. Mar, a young Miami-based artist having his first solo show in New York, have their own combustive sculptural hysteria.

Looking closely, you discover in Mr. Mar's source materials a wide range of traditional and contemporary patterns and imagery, including pieces of medieval sculpture, Art Nouveau-ish motifs, a reproduction of an early Frank Stella painting and pictures of jewelry and precious stones. So while his monsters embody a ferocious, prehistoric ID, they also personify the visually devouring soul of modern mass media. KEN JOHNSON